A difficult challenge in fabricating electron field-emission arrays, such as those used in field-emission displays, is providing a getter material effective for preventing the electron emitters from becoming contaminated. Typically in field-emission displays, a getter material is placed at the outer edge of the entire array. Since the width and length of a typical display can be several tens of centimeters, and the distance between the emitter and anode of each cell is typically on the order of only 50 to 200 micrometers, a getter material can be disposed too far away from many emitters of the array to effectively getter decomposition products or outgassed species. The result can be contamination of the emitter, causing changes in work function, with resulting catastrophic failure of the field-emission array.